Beetlejuice 2 Confirmed

Good news Beetlejuice fans! It has been confirmed that a Beetlejuice sequel is indeed in the making! To some of you this isn’t a big deal, but coming from a huge, and I’m talking HUGE fan of the original film from 1988, I have to admit that I am nervous as can be about such news. Over the years rumors of Beetlejuice 2 have floated around, with no true results.

In 1991, director Tim Burton had the idea to create Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, hiring
screenwriter Jonathan Gems (Mars Attacks!) to write the script. Based on what I have read on the tropical-themed never produced movie, I have to express an immense amount of relief that it never made it to the big screen. (Talk about a disaster!) To briefly summarize; the beloved ghost couple, the Maitlands, are nowhere to be found in the story. The Deetz family moves to Hawaii in hopes of opening a hotel dubbed
“The Deetz Paradise”, their goth daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) falls in love with some surfer dude, and our favorite ghost with the most is working in a supermarket in the Neitherworld bagging groceries. (Uh, what?)

In the end, the plot matches the first film. Beetlejuice is summoned by Lydia to help her out of a crisis, he wreaks havoc, and is eventually put back where he belongs, the afterlife. I think we can all agree that such a movie would have been a disgrace to the original and Tim Burton probably would have never found work again. Since that failed attempt, all talk of a Beetlejuice continuation sort of died out until September 2011, when Warner Bros. hired on author and producer Seth Grahame-Smith, (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Dark Shadows) to write a script for Beetlejuice 2. Grahame-Smith complied so long as Michael Keaton would return to the role, and if Tim Burton deemed the script worthy of production. This particular sequel will be a follow-up of the first, set a good 26 years later after the Maitlands save Lydia from marrying Beetlejuice. Nothing has been said concerning the return of Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, or if Lydia will even be a part of it at all.

Just last month it was reported that the script is complete and Tim Burton is making the time to direct the much-awaited sequel in between other projects. A release date has not yet been decided, but if you are as obsessed as I am with anything Beetlejuice, then stay tuned for further updates!